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James King

Recording Artist · Active 1989–2016 · Martinsville, Virginia · Also a musician
Contemporary Bluegrass

James King was a Virginia-born lead singer and guitarist whom Tom T. Hall dubbed "the Bluegrass Storyteller" — a former Marine and honorary Clinch Mountain Boy whose raw, deeply emotional delivery and long Rounder Records catalog made him one of the most affecting traditional bluegrass voices of the 1990s and 2000s.

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  • Born James Elroy King on September 9, 1958 in Martinsville, Virginia; raised in Cana, in Carroll County. His father, Jim King, was a fiddler and tenor singer; an uncle, Joe Edd King, played with Ted Lundy.
  • Came to bluegrass as a teenager — a fan of Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath until hearing the Stanley Brothers in 1974 turned him into a lifelong traditionalist.
  • Served in the U.S. Marine Corps, then settled in Wilmington, Delaware, where he formed a band with Ted Lundy's sons T.J. and Bobby Lundy.
  • Sang as a featured vocalist in Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys in the 1980s, deepening the Stanley-rooted sound that defined his own work; Stanley later made him an honorary member.
  • Recorded a self-titled debut for Webco (1985) and It's a Cold Cold World (1989) before Dudley Connell introduced him to Ken Irwin and Rounder Records.
  • These Old Pictures (Rounder, 1993) — backed by members of the Johnson Mountain Boys and the Lynn Morris Band — was named Breakthrough Album of the Year by Bluegrass Unlimited.
  • Led the James King Band, named IBMA Emerging Artist of the Year in 1997.
  • Co-founded the supergroup Longview in 1997 with Dudley Connell, Don Rigsby, Marshall Wilborn, Glen Duncan, and Joe Mullins; later lineups added J.D. Crowe, Ron Stewart, and Lou Reid.
  • His Rounder catalog continued with Lonesome and Then Some (1995), Bed by the Window (1998), Thirty Years of Farming, Gardens in the Sky, and the Grammy-nominated Three Chords and the Truth (2013), his final studio album. Signature songs include "Bed by the Window," "Echo Mountain," "Coldest Day of Winter," and "Thirty Years of Farming."
  • Inducted into the Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame in 2014; died May 19, 2016 in Salem, Virginia, at age 57, after a long illness. Ken Irwin called him "one of the most intuitive singers in all of bluegrass."

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